And all came to pass as Virgil planned. For the lady, having seated herself in great state, found herself caught, and could not rise.
Then there was great laughter, and it was proposed that everyone present should kiss her. And as one beginning leads to strange ending, the end thereof was that they treated her senza vergogna, saying that when a bird is once caught in a snare, everybody who pleases may pluck a feather.
The classical scholar will find in this tale a probable reminiscence of the chair made by Vulcan wherein to entrap Juno, in which he succeeded, so that she was made to appear ridiculous to all the gods. It is worth noting in this connection that such chairs are made even to the present day, and that without invisible nets or any magic. One is mentioned in a book entitled “The Life of Dr. Jennings the Poisoner” (Philadelphia, T. B. Peterson, Bros.). If any person sat in it, he or she fell back, and certain clasps closed over the victim, holding him or her down perfectly helpless, rendering robbery or violence easy. Since writing the foregoing, I have in a recent French novel read a description of such a chair, with the additional information that such seats were originally invented for and used by physicians to confine lunatic patients. A friend of mine told me that he had seen one in a house of ill-fame in New York.
The legend of the Lady and the Chair suggests a very curious subject of investigation. It is very probably known to the reader that, to make a mesmerized or hypnotized subject remain seated, whether he or she will or not, is one of the common experiments of the modern magicians. It is thus described by M. Debay in his work “Les Mystères du Sommeil et Magnetisme.”
The operator asks the subject, “Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Rise from your chair.” (He rises.) “Tell all present that you are not asleep.”
“No. I am wide awake.”
The operator takes the subject by the hand, leads him to different persons present with whom he is acquainted, and asks him if he knows them. He replies:
“Certainly I know them.”
“Name them.”
He does so.
“All right. Now sit down.” (The subject obeys.) “And now I forbid you to rise. It is for you impossible—you cannot move!”
The subject makes ineffectual efforts to rise, but remains attached to the chair as if held fast by an invisible power.
The operator then says:
“Now you may rise. I permit you to do so. Rise—I order it!”
The subject rises from the chair without an effort.
I have frequently had occasion to observe that, in all of these legends which I have received from witches, the story, unlike the common fairy tale or novella of any kind, is only, as it were, a painted casket in which is enclosed the jewel of some secret in sorcery, generally with an incantation. Was not this the case with many of the old myths? Do they not all, in fact, really set forth, so far as their makers understood them, the mysteries of Nature, and possibly in some cases those of the wonder-works or miracles of the priests and magicians? There was a German—I forget his name—who wrote a book to prove that Jupiter, Juno, and all the rest, were the elements as known to us now, and all the wonders told of all the gods, with the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid, only a marvellous poetic allegory of chemical combinations and changes. That hypnotism was known to Egyptians of old is perfectly established—at least to his own satisfaction—by Louis Figuier in his “Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes,” Paris, 1861; and it is extremely possible. Therefore it may be that Juno in the chair is but the prototype of a Mademoiselle Adèle, or Angelique Cottin, or Marie Raynard, or some other of the “little Foxes,” who, by the way, are alluded to in the Old Testament.
VIRGIL AND THE GODDESS OF THE CHASE.
“Images, though made by men, are the bodies of gods, rendered perceptible to the sight and touch. In the images are certain spirits brought by invitation, after which they have the power of doing whatever they please; either to hurt, or to a certain extent to fulfil the desires of those persons by whom divine honours and duteous worship are rendered unto them. . . . Do you not see, O Asclepias, that statues are animated by sense, and actually capable of doing such actions?”—Hermes Trismegistus, ap. Augustine, C. D., viii. 23.
“And there withall Diana gan appere
With bowe in hand, right as an hunteresse,
And saydé, ‘Daughter—stint thin heavinesse. . . .’
And forth she went and made a vanishing.”Chaucer: The Knighte’s Tale.
There was in the oldest times in Florence a noble family, but one so impoverished that their giorni di festa, or feast-days, were few and far between. However, they dwelt in their old palace, which was in the street now called the Via Citadella, which was a fine old building, and so they lived in style before the world, when many a day they hardly had anything to eat.
Round this palace was a large garden in which stood an ancient marble statue of a beautiful woman, running very rapidly, with a dog by her side. She held in her hand a bow, and on her forehead was a small moon; it seemed as if, instead of being in a garden, she was in a forest hunting wild game. And it was said that by night, when all was still and no one present, and the moon shone, the statue became like life, and very beautiful, and then she fled away and did not return till the moon set, or the sun rose.